The Many Marriages of the Master
by The Winged Lion of Coruscant
Summary: By the fourth time, though, he begins to suspect something isn’t quite “accidental” about all these marriages of theirs. Four is, after all, a lot of times to accidentally say “I do” in just two months." Slash - Master/Doctor. CRAAAAAAAAACK. And fluff.


All I can say is I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. ;D SHAMELESS CRACK. VERY SHAMELESS. Like, thought of while half-asleep after watching Part One of "The Sea Devils" (which is kriffing amazing, by the way ;D), and then written between 11 PM and 1 AM while waiting for a peer editor to come through on a paper about Nazism. So yeah. ;D

I mean, they both try to propose to each other enough in the show anyways, right? (EoT II with the Doctor being all "let's go travel the universe!", poor Delgado!Master with his "pleasepleaseplease rule the universe with me", and so on and so forth.) It's not /that/ unlikely … right? ;D (Besides, the Doctor really is probably that bad at expressing himself … ;D) (And note: I do know Tegan's name. ;D See? There. TeganTeganTegan. It's the Master's decision to forget, however. ;D)

And I promise I'll get to work on "Logical Conclusions" soon – I'll try my level best to have the next part up by this weekend. I'm sorry! I just excel at crackfluff, and LC is definitely not crackfluff, so it's giving me problems … ;D

Also – please review? Please with universal domination on top? Reviews make my life.

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The Many Marriages of the Master

The first time they get married, the Master thinks it's all a mistake, and lets it pass with a minimum of Doctor-teasing when they return to the TARDIS. After all, how was the Doctor to know that saying _that_ at just the wrong (or right, as he later suspects) moment to the Grand Priestess would end up with them in front of an altar with knives at their throats and a warbling wedding ceremony being read at them?

By the fourth time, though, he begins to suspect something isn't quite "accidental" about all these marriages of theirs. Four is, after all, a lot of times to accidentally say "I do" in just two months.

In fact, if he weren't absolutely sure the Doctor was completely uninterested, he might consider this whole farce some sort of deranged courtship attempt on the Doctor's behalf. But of course, not even the Doctor is _this_ pathetic at trying to express his emotions. No one could be.

The second time they get married, it's on a planet located, if not in the armpit of the universe, then at least somewhere on the bottom of its foot, right beside its bunions. It's hot, and sticky, and there's sand everywhere, and there are two identical dark semicircles of sweat on the Doctor's blue suit, right underneath his arms. It is not the most flattering look for a potential bride. Still, the tribes-people they had run into are awfully convincing (the flame-throwing spears probably have something to do with it), and really, it is an awfully hard language to manage properly (the Doctor had somehow managed to get them into a marriage contract by confusing a third declension fifth gender adjective with an almost homophonic pluperfect seventh conjugation verb), and it's not like it will have any lasting impact on their lives anyways. Besides, they've already been married once before. This isn't even anything new.

A legal quandary presents them with their third marriage opportunity. Somehow, they're being sued for saving the planet. The Doctor is exceedingly irritated (the Master is irritated, too – he _saved_ the planet, for crying out loud; they should really be giving the whole thing to him for the amount of self-restraint he'd displayed in not slipping and pressing the big red flashing button when he had the chance) and yells a lot. Then he sits down at a library terminal and refuses to leave until he's read every single book on law the databanks of their comfortably-appointed prison ship contain. He's there for several hours, banging on the screen and zapping it with his sonic screwdriver, as the Master sits and watches him from a distance while rereading The Prince for what must be the fourth time and marveling at how limited Machiavelli was. At last, the Doctor discovers a loophole in the laws: apparently, if they're married, the provisions under which they're being sued will be null and void. The Master really isn't looking forward to being stuck forever on this ship, so he agrees to it. They announce their plans (which excites the populace, as _they_ at least appreciate the work the two Time Lords have done for them) and go down to the planet for an extremely elaborate public wedding the next day. The Doctor wears the dress and they get to have an actual reception afterwards, with cake and jelly babies and proper music, which appeases the Master.

The fourth time, they manage to go for a double whammy: they visit a planet that, according to its parliament, is going to explode in two hours if every single member of the population isn't married by then (the plot of a insane, lovelorn terrorist), and manage both to get themselves married and then marry themselves. Literally: first, they go to a small temple, say the requisite "I do"s (the Master is beginning to have an unfortunate degree of familiarity with wedding oaths), and then run into their past selves (the dandy, who looks delightfully flushed – all that running around trying to figure out what's going on has certainly added to his color – and himself when he was all leers and gloves and an extremely dashing beard (he wonders briefly if he should try re-growing the beard in this regeneration, but ultimately decides against it – the one time he tried, it came in all scruffy and looked more like a Stubble of Evil than a proper Goatee of Evil)) and act as priests for their own wedding. They're careful to disguise themselves so that they don't cause any temporal paradoxes; the Doctor wears a white robe with a cowl and a surprisingly low collar that makes the Master wonder what exactly his neck would taste like if he licked it. Their past selves both look extremely delighted at being married (and are extremely bad at hiding it … if the (in terms of regenerations) younger Doctor continues his stream of Awkward NeckrubsTM any longer, he may rub his neck out of existence, the Master thinks). His version of the Doctor looks extremely lickable. All in all, it is not a terrible day.

Still, it sets the Master to wondering: how in all forty-two underworlds of the K'bingi people of Jathor 4 have they managed to get married so many times? It has been _two months_. Two months since they ran into each other on Tessil 9, the Doctor running away from a crazed horde of slug-riding barbarians, the Master down a TARDIS and trying desperately to get off-planet. Two months traveling around in the Doctor's TARDIS saving the universe. Two months and four weddings!

Before he has time to contemplate this further, their fifth wedding happens. Two in one week – this really is a new record. They're married by an ex-advice-columnist-turned-world-president who seems to believe that if they got married it would "fix up your relationship like a nice new _hjizdk_"(a word which the TARDIS fails to translate – the Master thinks it either means "house" or "frog", but he's not sure). She doesn't even give them time to explain to her that a) all their relationship actually consists of is each of them trying to destroy everything the other idealizes and b) they're already been married four times over anyways. This time, they end up psychically linked, an unfortunate situation which requires them both to shield their minds frantically all the time now. They have to sleep at the same time _in the same room_ so that their thoughts don't spill into each other's while they dream and one can wake the other up if need be in order to prevent unpleasant dream-sharing experiences.

With the advent of their sixth wedding (don't ask … really, don't ask), the Master comes to the conclusion that this is not all accidental. He locks himself in his room in the TARDIS for several days and broods and sulks and schemes and for the life of him can't figure out what to do. What is _the Doctor_ trying to achieve by all this? Some sort of guilt trip in case the Master ever tries to leave: "I'm your husband – you can't leave without filing divorce papers on all seventy-two planets we're married on!"? Humiliation: "You're desperate enough to marry _me_?"? Driving the Master even more insane than he is already: "Hahahaha! We're married, nyah nyah!"?

After a week of brooding, the Master realizes that he hasn't seen the Doctor … for all seven days he was brooding during. This is not a normal state of affairs. Usually, the Doctor would come in after a few hours, bouncing and grinning and beaming at him like a four year-old on the first day of summer vacation, and tell him to hurry on out, they were visiting a planet, and if the Master doesn't come, he won't have anyone to wax poetic to about somewhere else entirely where he'd met someone else entirely in a manner that vaguely reminded him of whatever trouble they got themselves into now.

He frowns and stretches out his mind to try to figure out where the Doctor's gone off to. An attempt that fails to locate the Doctor. Spectacularly.

The Doctor has left the TARDIS _without him_.

The Master angrily leaves the TARDIS and sets out to find him and yell at him about abandoning him _again_ – and finishes the day in front of yet another altar, with yet another funny-hatted priest droning at him (apparently, funny hats are a trait shared by religious authorities the universe over). The Doctor is standing next to him, his arms still handcuffed together, his tie missing, and his hair all smooshed down to one side. Well. A week in jail _will_ make you look more ruffled than usual (though how that's possible with the Doctor – considering the other man's natural state looks like it was on the receiving end of an extreme electric shock – the Master is unsure). They get married and then the Master drags the Doctor back to the TARDIS (nearly "accidentally" forgetting to unlock the handcuffs, until the Doctor rather more acidly than usual reminds him) and has a good long yell at him.

"Couldn't you just ask me out like a normal person?" he demands at the end. "Most people go for the wedding _afterwards_! They don't – Rassilon, you're so – didn't you ever have _anyone_ give you relationship advice? What – no, Jo Grant does not count. Before you ask, neither does that Australain woman whose name I can't be bothered to remember. Are you really so honest-to-god thick you think _this_ is how you go about courting someone?"

The Doctor shuffles his sheet and rubs the back of his head and messes with his hair and then quietly asks the Master if he wants to go for lunch in Paris during the 1970's. You know – because they're tired from their long day and all that. There's a little café he knows with a really spectacular view, and it might be, you know, fun. Maybe?

The Master is amenable to that suggestion, and twenty minutes later (a period of time the Doctor insists he need to have to "freshen up", because he really has been in jail for a week (except then he forgets to keep up his mental shielding and the Master hears all of his thoughts without him realizing as he tries to decide which suit he looks best in and whether he should put in more hair gel)) they are sitting by the Seine. The Doctor is tipping back his chair, rather awkwardly trying to make small talk, and the Master thinks about bursting into (evil) laughter, because the Doctor is all fine when it comes to weddings but can't handle a simple date.

It's all very nice, though, as they eat sandwiches and ice cream and watch bikers narrowly avoid being killed by traffic (really, these humans have such limited conceptions of the future and spatio-temporal relationships). It's a definite possibility, the Master muses, while half-listening to the Doctor, that one of them might one day properly Pop the Question to the other in a café like this. Preferably not today – the Master is, at the moment, all wedding-ed out – but perhaps someday in the future. Eight is a good number, isn't it?

(Though ten is a slightly better one. This is his tenth regeneration; it might be good luck to get married ten times … And ten plus ten is twenty, which is double the fun … )


End file.
